Summary of eRumor:
Children’s television personality Fed Rogers was a Navy Seal and a sniper in Vietnam with 25 confirmed kills to his credit.
The Truth:
Fred Rogers, the founder and host of the popular U.S. children’s television program Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood never served in the military. There have been various false rumors about him including one that claims he always wore long-sleeved shirts to hide his tattoo.
According to his official biography from Family Communications, the producers of his show, Fred Rogers went directly from college into media.
He was first hired as an assistant producer by NBC television in New York and worked on several classic shows such as The Voice of Firestone, The Kate Smith Hour, and The NBC Opera Theatre.
He was asked to help develop some of the first programming for WQED in Pittsburgh, the nation’s first community-sponsored educational television station.
Some of what he created was children’s programming that eventually led to Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
Rogers’ major in college was Music Composition but he later attended both Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Child Development and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1963.
He died on February 27, 2003 at his home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
